The Barbary Coast

The thrilling history of the seedy underworld that birthed San Francisco.

“The bible for San Francisco’s bad old days.” —San Francisco Chronicle

The history of the Barbary Coast properly begins with the gold rush to California in 1849. From the influx of gold-seekers and the horde of gamblers, thieves, harlots, politicians, and other felonious parasites who battened upon them, there arose a unique criminal district.

The Barbary Coast is Herbert Asbury’s classic chronicle of the birth of San Francisco—a violent explosion from which the infant city emerged full-grown and raging wild. From all over the world, practitioners of every vice stampeded for the blood and money of the gold fields. Gambling dens ran all day including Sundays. From noon to noon, houses of prostitution offered girls of every age and race. This is the story of the banditry, opium bouts, tong wars, and corruption, from the eureka at Sutter’s Mill until the last bagnio closed its doors seventy years later. 

• “The bible for San Francisco’s bad old days.”
  San Francisco Chronicle
• “San Francisco had the damnedest fine ghosts, and Asbury brought them back to life.”
  Salon